With Insomnia, Mind May Also Wander During Day

By Mary Elizabeth Dallas

People with insomnia have trouble concentrating during the day because the "wandering mind" areas of their brains may not be turned off, according to a new study.

Using brain imaging technology, researchers found that people with insomnia who were performing a working memory task did not rely less on the "default mode" regions of their brain that are usually active only when the mind is wandering.

The findings might help explain why insomniacs do not function as efficiently during the day, and could also lead to improved treatments for the sleep disorder, according to the authors of the study published in the September issue of the journal Sleep.

"We found that insomnia subjects did not properly turn on brain regions critical to a working memory task and did not turn off 'mind-wandering' brain regions irrelevant to the task," study lead author Sean Drummond said in a journal news release. "Based on these results, it is not surprising that someone with insomnia would feel like they are working harder to do the same job as a healthy sleeper."

Drummond is an associate professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, and the VA San Diego Healthcare System, as well as the secretary/treasurer of the Sleep Research Society.

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1 Exercise Session Won't Bring Good Night's Sleep

By By Alan Mozes

If you decide to hit the gym in hopes that a quick dose of exercise will cure your insomnia, a new study suggests that will not be enough.

While adopting an exercise program did ultimately help some insomniacs sleep better, the scientists found the impact was far from immediate.

"Where the idea to explore this came from is that my patients were coming in and saying that they heard that exercise is good for sleep," explained study author Kelly Baron, director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program with the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago. "But people generally want a quick fix. And they weren't seeing improvements right way. So, they were getting discouraged," she said.

"The message here is that exercise is not a quick fix, which I don't really think is discouraging at all," Baron said. "Our previous work found that exercise over a 16-week period is very effective in promoting sleep, on par with any kind of medication. But like with weight loss or any sort of behavioral change, it doesn't happen immediately. You have to measure progress over months, not day-to-day."

Baron and her colleagues published their latest findings online Aug. 15 in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.

With this latest study, the dashed expectations came after the researchers took a closer look at earlier data on the sleep habits of 11 sedentary middle-aged and elderly women. All had been diagnosed with insomnia before beginning a four-month, monitored regimen of aerobics.

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